International Energy Agency

The International Energy Agency (IEA) describes its role as being an energy policy adviser to its 27 member countries on "in their effort to ensure reliable, affordable and clean energy for their citizens." On its website it states that its current work "focuses on climate change policies, market reform, energy technology collaboration and outreach to the rest of the world, especially major consumers and producers of energy like China, India, Russia and the OPEC countries."

Allegations of pro-oil and nuclear power bias
The IEA has systematically underestimated the potential of renewable energy sources like wind and solar, "because of its ties to the oil, gas and nuclear sectors," Energy Watch, a group of scientists and politicians, charged in a January 2009 report (pdf). Swiss parliamentarian and Energy Watch member Rudolf Rechsteiner said that IEA was "delaying the change to a renewable world. They continue touting nuclear and carbon-capture-and-storage, classical central solutions, instead of a more neutral approach, which would favour new solutions."

The Energy Watch report documented that IEA has dramatically underestimated wind power capacity over the past decade. IEA's 2008 World Energy Outlook "predicts a fivefold increase in wind energy from 2006-2015, but then assumes a rapid slowdown" without explaining why "the wind sector should suffer such a crisis by 2015 and after." IEA, which refused to comment on the report, draws "senior staff from the fossil-fuel industry."

Subsidiary
The IEAGHG Programme was established under the terms of an Implementing Agreement from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Contact details
9, rue de la Fédération 75739 Paris Cedex 15, France Phone:(33 1) 4057 6500/01 Fax: (33 1) 4057 6559 Website: http://www.iea.org/

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Carbon Capture and Storage
 * International Agency for Renewable Energies
 * Weyburn-Midale CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project
 * IEAGHG

External resources
IEA websites on specific topics:
 * "Cleaner Fossil Fuels"
 * "Climate Change"
 * "Coal"
 * "Energy Efficiency"
 * ""Greenhouse Gases"


 * International Energy Agency, Carbon Capture and Storage: Full-scale demonstration progress update", International Energy Agency, June 2009. (Pdf)